Chris Lilley
Distinguished Expert, Color, Graphics & Fonts at W3C
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolChris Lilley is a Distinguished Expert in Color, Graphics & Fonts at W3C with nearly three decades shaping web graphics standards, from co-developing PNG and @font-face to being known as the self-described "Father of SVG." Based in Boston, he combines deep technical authorship and editorial rigor—leading SVG and CSS specification work, contributing Web Platform Tests, and improving Web Audio documentation—with hands-on coding in areas like color conversions and embedded audio for projects such as color.js and the Teensy Audio Library. He has steered W3C’s Interaction Domain and Graphics activities for decades, bridging research-grade color science (OKLab, ICtCp) with practical web implementations like WOFF and font handling. Less obvious: his background in biological computation and early technical-author work informs a methodical, interdisciplinary approach to specification-writing and test-driven standardization.
29 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
BSc, Biochemistry, BSc, Biochemistry at University of StirlingMSc, Biological Computation, MSc, Biological Computation at University of York
French, English
Github Skills (26)
spec10
javascript10
c-language10
color-theory10
testing10
technical-writing10
css10
teensy10
audio-processing10
web-audio-api10
svg10
sys10
web-standards10
specification10
html10
Programming languages (19)
Github contributions (5)
w3c/csswg-drafts
Oct 1997 - Jan 2023
CSS Working Group Editor Drafts
Role in this project:
Front-end Developer
Front-end DeveloperContributions:239 reviews, 1762 commits, 278 PRs in 25 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Chris's commits primarily focus on fixing broken links and adding WPT (Web Platform Tests) annotations to existing specifications in the CSS working group's drafts. The commits involve updating the test suite to reflect changes in the specifications. The contributions demonstrate an understanding of testing, documentation, and a general focus on standard compliance with the project's primary domain.
cssworking-groupdrafts
color-js/color.js
May 2020 - Jan 2023
Color conversion & manipulation library by the editors of the CSS Color specifications
Role in this project:Full-stack Developer
Full-stack DeveloperContributions:1 release, 69 reviews, 219 commits in 2 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Chris primarily contributed to the implementation of new color spaces and related functionalities within the color.js library. Their work included adding and refining color space conversions, specifically for HWB, OKLab, ACEScc, and ICtCp color spaces. They also focused on improving the accuracy of color difference calculations, implementing and testing various Delta E methods. Furthermore, they improved the documentation and examples.
cielabrec2020css-colorcolor-palettesrgb
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